I don’t know about you, but one of the more frustrating things about working with students with ADHD is how difficult it is to teach them executive functioning skills, you know, things like problem solving, prioritization, planning, organization, and memory!
And I think part of the difficulty for me was that I wasn’t really ever trained how to teach these things! I mean, I’m a social worker! I’ll give you charts, coping strategies, visual schedules, blah blah blah…but teaching a kid organization? Can’t they just LEARN to keep their desk clean and take notes like everyone else?
And right there’s the key…they CAN’T just learn “like everyone else.”
By the nature of ADHD, these students’ brains can be a place where information gets misfiled, forgotten, and confused (if it even gets through their ears to begin with!) We can’t just tell a student with attention difficulties information and expect them to process, store, and remember it. School is often an auditory place, but it’s just not going to happen! Even students that make medication that may help them focus don’t necessarily “magically” gain executive functioning skills.
So this is where I came in. Ideally, executive functioning skills are taught to every student, in the context of a great general curriculum. But we all know that ideally and realistically aren’t always the same thing. So I ended up with tons of kids who couldn’t organize information in their brains and as a result had a really difficult time learning.
After a lot of trial and error, I learned that graphic organizers are HUGELY helpful for kids with ADHD (and really, most kids!) The only thing is, most graphic organizers were SUPER boring and very specific for a certain subject. I wanted general graphic organizers that I could use for everything from academic subjects to relationships and life situations.
So I made my own 🙂 I put some of them into my Organization Activities for Students with ADHD, but here are 26 of them! In addition to being usable for any subject or situation, they’re also super colorful and can hold students’ attention a lot easier than plain old boring black and white.
One thing I did (that saved me tons of colored ink), was print them in color and laminate them. Then, students can fill them out in my room with dry erase marker, I can make a copy to keep or give to them, and then erase them for the next week or the next kid.
Here is what’s included:
– Lined 3-Column Chart
– Unlined 3-Column Chart
– Answer Organization Sheet
– Cause & Effect
– Lined 2-Column Chart
– Unlined 2-Column Chart
– 4-Step Cycle
– 5-Step Cycle
– Fact & Opinion
– Cause & Effect Fishbone
– Idea Web
– 4-Section Wheel
– 8-Section Wheel
– Triangle Chart
– Inverted Triangle Chart
– Main Idea Web
– Positives & Negatives
– The Five 5’s Table
– 5 Senses Chart
– 3-Step Sequence
– 6-Step Sequence
– Story Parts Organizer
– 2-Part Venn Diagram
– 3-Part Venn Diagram
– Organization Web
